Some of the films that won Oscar for foreign-language film are nearly unknown to wide audience. Especially in the 80's, strange things happened: Oscar for political movie from Argentina, mysterious films from Switzerland and the Netherlands... And of course the prize for Benigni's "masterpiece" seems to be very controversial. On the other hand, great directors like Tarkowski, Antonioni, Angelopoulos, Godard, Bresson had never been nominated (if this is because of being too "artistic", why had Bergman and Fellini won repeatedly ?). Which movie - in your opinion - won the Oscar unjustifiably and why?

The films nominated are often the most accessible crowd-pleasers as you know. I think the 1991 winner "Mediterraneo" did not deserve to beat the nominated "Raise the Red Lantern" and "The Ox" and others not nominated.

Frequently the Oscars give the awards to the most popular of the foreign films (Life is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger, Cinema Paradiso, etc), though it's not always the case (look at last year's award to No Man's Land over Amelie). However, a few films that I would have to greatly disagree with would efinitely be Mediterraneo and Belle Epoque.

Don't forget that the Academy doesn't choose the films that each country will submit. If Antonioni has never been nominated, part of the reason would be that Italy probably never submitted any of his films for consideration. If spain had submitted Talk To Her this year, they would have won easily over Nowhere In Africa, but instead they thought Americans wouldn't go for a movie that "sympathized" with a rapist and so chose something else that didn't even get nominated.

Even so, Nowhere in Africa was up against The Man Without a Past and shouldn't have won. The Academy likes to award films which it considers "worthy", rather than the best piece of cinema. This is why films like A Beautiful Mind win the Best Picture Oscar.